to cost $300,000. Gilbert filed plans that November for Holbrook's house, which was to be a six-story limestone structure costing $95,000. Plant's residence at 651–653 Fifth Avenue was completed in 1905, and he and his wife Nellie moved into the house. The facade of the Holbrook House was finished by that April, and his house was finished the next year. Occupancy When 4 East 52nd Street was completed, it was occupied by Edward Holbrook and his wife Frances. In January 1906, the Holbrook House hosted the wedding of their daughter Lilian to Count Guillaume de Balincourt. The Holbrooks sold the residence a year and a half later, in June 1907. The buyers of the 52nd Street house were initially not publicly revealed, but The New York Times announced the following month that tobacco businessman James Buchanan Duke had bought the house for $300,000. The Times reported that Duke was rumored to have been looking for a mansion on the Upper East Side. Duke had purchased a site on 78th Street by 1909, which would become his house. 4 East 52nd Street was then occupied by the family of real estate developer Harry James Luce, who had moved into the house by August 1910, when he received a mortgage on the property. Immediately to the west, Fifth Avenue was widened in 1911, and the marble steps in front of Plant's house had to be cut back. Plant was forced to truncate his front areaway and fence. Around that time, the neighborhood was growing increasingly commercial. Plant's wife Nellie died in 1913 and the next year he remarried to Mae Cadwell. By 1916, Plant decided to move to a new mansion at Fifth Avenue and 86th Street. The new mansion was designed by Guy Lowell as an interpretation of an Italian Renaissance palazzo. The Luces retained their adjacent house for several more years; in 1922, The New York Times published a social bulletin announcing that Harry Luce's daughter was returning to the house after three years abroad. The Luce family continued to live at 4 East 52nd Street until about 1927. Commercial use Store conversion 653 Fifth Avenue was resold to William Kissam Vanderbilt, who leased the house to Cartier in October 1916, thereby breaking his family's own restriction on the lot. At the time, Cartier's previous space at 712 Fifth Avenue was becoming too small for the company. The neighboring house